What the Heck Is Watergate Salad?!

The world of dessert salads is full of mysteries, like why they're called salads but rarely contain anything you'd typically put in the traditional dish. Or why so many include Jell-O, pudding mix, Cool Whip, or all three (the chilled, sugary trifecta).

Watergate Salad is one such mystery. All kinds of rumors surround the dish—a combination of pistachio pudding mix, Cool Whip, crushed pineapple, pecans and mini marshmallows—and how it got its name, since no one's publicly taken credit for it.

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While there's no direct relation to the Nixon scandal of the '70s, one popular theory is that it became the de-facto name for the dish after a newspaper published a joke comparing the way dessert salads are made to the way Watergate was handled.

"The Watergate Salad is said to be catching on ... a very popular kind of icebox salad, and easy to make. No matter what ingredients of a Watergate Icebox Salad, you just put the lid over them and stick them in the back of the icebox," wrote John Keasler in 1973 in his syndicated column, as Yesterdish found in the Thomasville (Georgia) Times Enterprise.

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Basically, no matter what happens, cover it up and ignore that it ever existed.

Erika LaPresto

While the joke could apply to any dessert salad, it seems to have stuck to this one in particular because it shares two key ingredients with Watergate Cake: pistachio pudding mix and nuts. Add to that the fact that Kraft released its own pistachio pudding mix in the mid-1970s, and in the '80s promoted an almost identical recipe, called Pistachio Pineapple Delight, on every box sold, and it makes sense how the two could be linked over time.

In 1993, Kraft added mini marshmallows to its Pistachio Pineapple Delight and gave the people the name they preferred, dubbing the semi-new treat 'Watergate Salad.' The side (or dessert, depending on how you serve it) is one of the most-searched-for dishes in Kansas every holiday season, according to Google, though Kraft reports it's most popular in North Carolina.

Ethan Calabrese

However, you might have an entirely different name for this treat. Other names for it found around the web include Green Goop, Green Stuff, Green Fluff, Pistachio Delight (guess the 'pineapple' part is too wordy) and Shut the Gate Salad.

That last one may sound like someone mis-hearing another person say "Watergate Salad," but there's a tale behind that name, too: "...it was so quick and easy to make that when the men-folk came home from the fields and you heard them 'shut the gate,' there was still time to get the salad ready for dinner," published The Daily Courier in 1997.

With all of the fuss surrounding the name, you pretty much have to try it, right?